BATS AND BUTTERFLIES

I was friendless for a long time.

Holed up in an empty house.

Head down over a discoloured plastic-cased PC monitor.

Phone calls ceased. Songs lammed my jammed throat.

You could label no-decibel, a quiet life.

Except, that quietude had no peace in it.

Only a zillion pieces of decaying sadness.

I was in hiding. From the world. From myself.

Friendship was a possession for happy people.

The ones who celebrated inebriated.

The ones who danced even after the music stopped.

The ones who got hitched and got others hitched.

Notice how they say all is fair in love and war?

Because nothing's fair in heartbreak and defeat.

Only bats and plaster-peeling terrace walls stay with you.

Your echo. Your location. Fixed. Unchanging.

In my middle age, the hesitant river of my youth

coursed back into its bouncy childhood.

I found friends like a tree does new birds. 

The bats became butterflies.

My feet found their springs, rusty yet working.

Still flexing. Still releasing.

Across terrace maps, laughter rolled into echoes without decibel limits.

I was friendless once.

Now I'm gloriously friendful.